Discovery

Discovery (1931–1958) was a champion American Thoroughbred racehorse. In a racing career which lasted from 1933 to 1936 he ran sixty-three times and won twenty-seven races. One of the leading American three-year-olds of his generation in 1934, he became a dominant performer in the next two seasons. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame said that he was: "...considered one of the greatest horses of the 20th century." Background A bright chestnut horse with a white blaze and white hind feet, Discovery was foaled at Walter J. Salmon's Mereworth Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. He was sired by the Preakness Stakes winner Display, another product of Mereworth. His dam, Ariadne, was a member of Thoroughbred family 23-b, which has produced many notable American racehorses including Zev, Affirmed and Winning Colors. Racing career Discovery was owned by Adolphe Pons of Country Life Farm in Bel Air, Maryland, who raced him at age two with limited success, winning only two of thirteen starts and being beaten in several races by future Hall of Famer Cavalcade. Purchased for $25,000 by Alfred G. Vanderbilt II's Sagamore Farm, Discovery raced one more time in 1933, finishing second. At age three, Discovery's racing season was marked by his continuing rivalry with Cavalcade. He finished second to Cavalcade in the 1934 Kentucky Derby and third to High Quest and Cavalcade in the Preakness Stakes. Both horses skipped the Belmont Stakes. Discovery went on to win the first of three consecutive Brooklyn and Whitney Handicaps (both under higher and higher weights), and set a world record time for one mile and three-sixteenths in the Rhode Island Handicap at Narragansett Park.